


Catching Snowflakes on Her Tongue

by wisdomeagle



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: femgenficathon, Gen, Pre-Series, Precocious Child, Protective Siblings, Quantum Mechanics, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-06
Updated: 2006-01-06
Packaged: 2018-04-18 12:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4705274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River discovers Heisenberg one bitterly cold day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catching Snowflakes on Her Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> For velocityofsound, who requested River and an ancient weapon in a FemGen ficathon.

Regan Tam looks up from her book (paper, precious) long enough to tell Simon to go check on his sister, but Simon knows without looking up from _his_ book that River's outside, catching snowflakes on her tongue. He won't tell Mother that, though, so has to feign worry and stretch his legs and peek his head outdoors and call, "River! What are you doing?"

"I'm compacting the ice crystals," she tells him, grinning. "I'm melting the snow."

"Okay," Simon says slowly. "Now, why?"

" _Because_ ," she says, rolling her eyes, "I want to know it. I'm conducting an experiment on the acidity of precipitation."

"You know," Simon tells her softly, "They say no two snowflakes are alike."

"That's not probable," River says with a frown. "They shouldn't say it if they don't know for certain. Will you examine them with me?"

"They're too small..."

"They aren't. They're small but not unobservable. Ask for a microscope for your birthday. Then we can know."

"The snow will all be melted by then."

"We'll _freeze it_ , Simon." River is five, but for Simon that's five years too many. She's been smarter than him since the minute she learned to talk, probably since before, but he can't count that far backwards. "You want to know it, don't you? The snow? It wants to know you." When River talks like that it's not right, not canny. He knows his parents talk about her when they think both he and River are in bed, low voices and strange syllables he's looked up in the big clunky medical dictionary, _savant_ and _autistic_. River is small enough to slide under the fence and find herself free. She twirls around and the black coat that's too big for her slips around her knees and lets the cold up her legs, but she can't feel it. She's testing the snow with her tongue and her hands, feeling it melt, learning with her finger tips that things change when you try to know them. Simon looks longingly over the fence but knows he's got studying to do for the better part of forever.

River turns towards him and smiles, a grin broad and eerie, that means, he's pretty sure, she knows he's got to go.

"You safe?" She thinks deeply on it, and finally nods solemnly - yes. Having done his duty by his mother, Simon's free to go back in, and River has no notion to come with him, and so they part. 

"Brothers and sisters are always going away from each other," she reminds him, in a voice that's still too thoughtful for five.

++

When she comes in, much later, she's a study in black and white, frost in her hair and on her fingers, long black coat and black gloves and a gleaming grin that means she's found something out. Their parents smile and coo over dinner, did she have a good time and did she learn a lot and didn't she feel the cold?

"The snow can't feel," River says. "It's just a thing, doesn't feel at all, no how. Not like a girl."

There's times when Simon doesn't know what makes his sister little 'cept her size. He knows he never was half so wise when he tried to sound clever, which he's mostly stopped trying now, for it never works with River around to show him up.

"Snow melts when you try to catch it," she says. "That's how they oughta beat the Browncoats. Send folk in to try to figure them out, soon as you touch them, they'll melt away to boring water. No one ever needs water; it just flows away forever."

"You should be a spy," Simon tells her. "Spies do that all the time, learn folk so they won't be a threat anymore. You'd make a good one. No one would suspect you in your big black coat. They'd think you were just a girl."

"Would they really?"

River has a habit, always has, of looking through you. Simon doesn't know if she's seeing what's on the other side or what's _in_ side, but either way he knows she'd never fool anyone; even some idiot Browncoat could tell in two seconds who River is.

"We've got to teach you the art of disguise," he says, and though he's old enough and River's not to know it's just a game, he's playing seriously now. "You'd be our secret weapon, River. The Alliance wouldn't fear for anything with you infiltrating enemy ranks."

"That's right," River says, pleased as any ordinary child to be praised.

"Mei-mei, what did you find in the snow?"

"Water," she tells him. "There's nothing in it but water."

"What would you find in the Browncoats?"

"Mud, likely."

Sometimes quizzing becomes too serious; he'll ask her something she doesn't know and she'll start to cry, and Mother will yell at him to stop teasing his sister. But he knows better than Mother or Father that it won't be long before River'll be making him cry with questions he can't answer, about the composition and topology of fractally different snowflakes and how to infiltrate rebel troops and what it means when you learn a thing to destroy it. One step ahead, he promises, and reads too late when River's dreaming simple dreams, the silly fancies little girls have that Simon wouldn't know anything about. He tucks the book into his lap and stares hard, but the words won't help him make sense of his sister.

And then, if he knew her - it's an ancient weapon she discovered this morning in the snow, and he doesn't want to aim it at his sister nor at anyone, not even the stinking rebels, nor even the snow. But least of all River, who brushes the hair away from her face in unconscious, dreamy contentment. She's simple now - simple as the snowflakes in which she sees only water - and he doesn't want to man the microscope that'll observe her into a boring water molecule, doesn't want to melt his sister.

"Go to sleep, silly," she says, waking for a moment. "It's too late to be up."

If only it were so simple.


End file.
